Reports on 2 industry propaganda exercises - 1 in the North, I in the
South. Good to see, in the first, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada
taking to task the University of Guelph for the aggressive pro-GM propagandising
of Doug Powell and the Food Safety Network (who, among other things, produce
the pro-GE list Agnet)

Dr John McMurtry, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, writes that
it is depressing to see the University playing the shill again for corporate
industrial agriculture and, specifically, operating as a privately funded
institutional propagandist for genetically modified organisms.

Unfortunately, that is what the University's recently launched, and
Orwellianly named, "Food Safety Network" and its director, Doug Powell,
are structured to do.

Their funding of $890,000 comes from the Donner Foundation, a wealthy
business foundation linked with the Fraser Institute, and from a former
meatpacking CEO.

Like the corporate pesticide lobby on campus, the GMO lobby misleadingly
represents its narrowed research for private corporate profit as capital-S
"Science." The reason you know that the so-called "Food Safety Network"
is not really interested in food safety begins from the facts that virtually
none of the suspect GMO's have been tested for potentially disastrous ecological
impacts by dispersion, genetic dominance and contamination of organic food
crops and other species, or for their allergen effects expressed by their
genetic milieus -- in short, for their actual health effects on life systems.

Yet Powell, an assistant professor appointee in successive departments,
has for years publicly attacked questioners and aggressively promoted GMO
products in spite of their systemic dangers which have not been adequately
tested.

This blind bias is called "rigorous scientific inquiry" and "shaping
and evaluating public policy on the critical issue of food safety" to hoodwink
the unknowing.

There is one fundamental confusion this special-interest misrepresentation
of "food safety" depends upon. It is that industrial food scientists like
Powell are not remotely educated in system-deciding normative concepts
like health, and so "safety" means whatever they want to mean, especially
when there is a lot of money in it.

In the meantime, even the federal Canadian Institute for Food Inspection
and Regulation housed on the University of Guelph campus is compromised
by an increasing encroachment of overt PR activities on its regulatory
research mandate, with promotional initiatives so mixed with its research
function that it has been publicly criticized by the Royal Society's Panel
on the Future of Food Technology for this failure to distinguish its research
functions from public relations campaigns.

McMurtry says he is sorry to say that he is ashamed of his university
for this latest institutionalization of a special-interest lobby as a University
body, and for its failure to ensure balanced dissemination of information
and relevant administrative commitment to the University's knowledge mission.
...
ngin note: Doug Powell's 'Agnet' list is produced by the Food Safety
Network at the University of Guelph. Sponsors include: ConAgra Foods Inc.,
Ag-West Biotech, Pioneer Hi-Bred, Council for Biotechnology Information
[industry front], McCain Foods Limited, Syngenta Seeds USA, McDonald's,
and Syngenta Crop Protection

A United States-based organisation has set up a regional office in Bangkok
to promote genetic engineering technology and counter sentiment against
the idea.

According to Panatta Junchai, director of the International Service
for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Application, or ISAAA Thailand, "Anti-GMOs
groups have flooded the country with information about the adverse effects
of GE technology. We will prove that the technology is not as bad as they
have claimed," adding that the Bangkok office was set up because GMOs had
been debated heatedly here and NGOs were very active.

Junchai also said that ISAAA was an academic organisation working closely
with Thai scientists from the National Science and Technology Development
Agency, which supported GE technology.

Its website says ISAAA works on forming partnerships between wealthy
and developing countries to enable the transfer of biotechnology applications
to poor farmers.

Ms Panatta said the office was surveying public attitudes towards GMOs
and had no ties with biotechnology multinational companies, although its
website says ISAAA is funded partly from donations from biotech firms.

Witoon Lianchamroon, director of Biothai, an NGO working on biodiversity
conservation, insists that ISAAA is a tool of the biotech industry and
its aim is to generate the right business climate to facilitate the industry's
expansion into developing countries, adding, "ISAAA'S goal, to eliminate
Asian farmers' poverty by using biotechnology, will make conditions worse
for small farmers because the technology is controlled by multinational
agribusiness whose interests are contrary to farmer needs."

Isabella Meister, Greenpeace International campaigner, said ISAAA lacked
transparency and that its operations in Asia were funded by several biotech
companies, including Cargill and Monsanto in the US, and Switzerland's
Novartis. ISAAA and its biotech partners were worried about Thailand's
strong stance against GMOs.